Maria Aspan

a 25% cut of some sales in China, as a condition of allowing it to sell some computer chips there.

Trump often makes these deals with CEOs who have gone out of their way to court him, sometimes donating to his personal projects.

Like NVIDIA CEO Jensen Wong, who's among the tech billionaires and companies funding Trump's controversial White House ballroom.

Here's Wong in April at a White House press conference.

CEOs have always tried to court the White House, whoever its occupant.

But for the U.S.

government, which almost never takes a direct stake in U.S.

companies, this is a huge break from tradition.

Now business experts across the political spectrum are worried that the United States is starting to look more like China.

Anne Lipton has been working in corporate law for decades.

She's a professor at the University of Colorado's law school.

She says that when the government picks winners and losers, companies have less incentive to compete with each other.

That leads to less innovation and less spending and less job creation, which can all hurt the economy.

This has long been the conventional wisdom in Washington and on Wall Street.

It certainly messes with what's known as free market capitalism, which for decades has been the gospel of corporate America.

Daniela Ballou Ayers founded a consulting company and served in the Obama administration.

Now she runs the Leadership Now Project, a coalition of business leaders that has endorsed political candidates from both parties.

She's worried that the United States is even at risk of tipping over into crony capitalism.

meaning that companies rise and fall based on how much a political leader likes them.

Like, say, the Russian billionaires who own oil companies under Vladimir Putin.